


King Canute

by Phoebe (Emeraldwoman)



Category: Secret Crossover!, X-Men (Comicverse)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-14
Updated: 2011-12-14
Packaged: 2017-10-27 08:07:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,865
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/293543
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Emeraldwoman/pseuds/Phoebe





	King Canute

Bobby has never seen so much water in his life, and it's all surging towards the East Coast in one vast, roaring wave. Unless someone does something, New York City is going to drown.

And by someone, they mean him.

It's too much and too sudden, and Bobby cannot deal. He keeps thinking of the ifs. Like, if Storm was here, she could take care of it. Or Jean, Jean could just push the tsunami away. But Storm's not here, and Jean's dead right now. It's just Emma and Kitty and Logan and Scott.

And him. The Astonishing Iceman. Who is expected to stop a tsunami in its tracks.

"It's just water, Bobby," Cyclops says. How does he stay so calm? "Just water, Iceman. You can do this."

They can only hear each other through the comsets in their ears. The water is so loud that the dock is vibrating

"I can't," he says, and his heart would be a jackhammer if it wasn't ice, like the rest of him. "I _can't_."

"If you won't, I will," Emma snaps, and the diamond ripples off her, and she's back to perfect, pale flesh. She reaches out for him with hands and mind and Bobby tries to yank himself away, though he knows it's useless. It's just that if it comes to a choice between being possessed again or being dead, he doesn't know what to choose, except Jean chose death most days and Jean had experience and experience should be your teacher and - _oh god_ \- it wasn't him who was going to die.

Everyone else would die, and _he_ would be part of an ocean he would never dare to rise from, and maybe that would be worst of all.

Except not, because all that water has frozen solid into a wall, 40 yards high, extending unevenly more than a mile out to sea. He knows the dimensions of it just like that, just as he knows ‚Äì well, almost knows ‚Äì that he didn't do it.

But who else could?

"Wow," Kitty breathes. "Bobby, that's amazing."

"I didn't-" Bobby begins, but he must have. Without knowing it. _Fuck._

"Not bad," Emma admits, and the diamond washes over her again. She's so clean and sparkling. "It's about time you realised your potential, Robert."

Bobby is about this far from smacking her in the mouth. His hand would shatter against her jaw but it's not like he couldn't put it back together again.

But Cyclops is eyeing the ice that towers above them. "Someone'd better take care of that," he suggests. And by someone, Cyclops means him.

So Bobby does the right, responsible thing instead of grappling with Scott's bitch girlfriend. He pays attention as he melts the wall down, slowly, slowly, and lets the melted water seep slowly into the sea that surges on its far side.

He doesn't want to think about freezing it without knowing it, doesn't want to think about what else he could do without thinking about it. Like turn every river into a glacier. Like bring about another Ice Age. Like pull every drop of water from the body of every living thing on the planet. _Fucking fuck it all to fucking hell._

There are other brightly-costumed people out there now, flying around the shore and checking for casualties. There won't be any on land, Bobby knows. He can feel along every inch of that mass of ice, and it doesn't touch land once.

Of course, anyone who was out to sea is deader than dead. But they were dead anyway. He feels his way around a ship, senses out the broken, twisted things that once were people. He keeps them in the ice. At least this way their families can have their bodies.

It takes a while ‚Äì two, three hours, maybe. The Avengers stop by, and the Fantastic Four, and Scott and Emma negotiate with them to keep the media away until he's done. Another tiny step in the road towards decent human/mutant relations. He thinks Captain America congratulates him, but even that doesn't make it sink in.

When he's finished, when all the bodies have been collected and the unfrozen sea is murmuring up against the dock as if nothing happened, Wolverine grabs his arm. Wolverine hasn't said much the entire time. He just watched Bobby working, and suggested Kitty go talk to someone else.

Kitty took it from him, like she would take it from no one else. Wolverine's girls. Go figure.

"Walk with me," Logan says, and points one yellow-gloved hand towards the packing crates piled on the docks.

"Logan, Kat Farrell from the Bugle is waiting," Emma says. "A favourable interview with the _Bugle_ , you can't _imagine_ -"

"Short walk," Logan says. "Let the kid catch his breath."

Bobby would protest ‚Äì the _kid_ , he's nearly 30 ‚Äì but a walk sounds good, or at least a lot better than nosy reporters.

"Five minutes," he tells Emma, and wonders why Logan grins.

Logan walks him into the maze of packing crates. It's like a little wooden town of alleys. Bobby catches a glimpse of someone moving past them from the corner of his eye as they pass an intersection ‚Äì some dockworker, probably. He thought they'd managed to evacuate. Maybe they've got back to work already.

Logan leads him through like he knows exactly where they going. Bobby is starting to get the feeling that maybe something's going on here, but he knows it's never good to rush Logan to something. He'll get there in his own time.

They stop. "You took us back through," Bobby says, confused. He can see the end of the dock from here, see where they stood, see where the wall of water bore down on them.

"Yep," Logan grunts, and fishes around the neck of his costume. He pulls out a gold pocket-watch on a long chain and of all the things in the world Logan would wear around his neck, Bobby would never have guessed this.

Then he steps in so close that Bobby can smell him, and loops the chain over Bobby's neck too.

"What the hell?" Bobby says, and tries to step away. It's not that he thinks Logan would hurt him, exactly, but he sort of makes Bobby nervous, all the same.

Logan turns the pocket-watch over, one, two, three times and everything changes.

And nothing does. Bobby feels, for the moment between one heartbeat and the next, like he's spinning through the centre of the universe. Then he's standing in the same place and Logan is taking the chain off his neck.

"It's three hours ago," Logan says, matter-of-factly. "We're going to wait for about twenty minutes, and then you're going to stop the tidal wave. You didn't do it before. But you'll do it now." He cocks his head. "Or then. Whatever."

Bobby stares at him.

"Come on, kid," Logan says impatiently. "It's not like time travel is a new thing to you."

And he's right, in theory anyway. Bobby is almost certain he could diagram the Summers family tree, and you can't do that without some mental readjustment. But _this_ is something new. Logan has a teeny personal time machine on the end of a golden chain. He can't ask about that, not yet.

"How do you know I'll do it this time?" he asks instead.

"Because you already did," Logan says. "You were here twice, and me too. Smelled you."

"Have I ever told you how creepy that is?" Bobby asks. His head is reeling.

"Lucky Hank's not here," Logan admits. "He'd have smelled you too, and wouldn't have known why. Can't let ourselves see ourselves. That's one of the rules."

"How do you know what the rules are?' Bobby says, edging closer to it.

"Don't know."

"How do you know how to use it?"

"Don't know that either."

Bobby takes a deep breath and asks the big question. "Where did you get it?"

"Can't fucking remember," Logan snaps, and from the way he snaps it, Bobby knows that Logan knows someone's screwed around with his head. _Again_.

Personally, if it was up to him, he wouldn't go around making it a special point to alter or erase the memories of one of the deadliest men on earth. This is just one of the reasons why Robert Drake will never make it in the exciting, fast-promoting field of supervillainy.

"But it comes in handy," Logan says, and under the mask his mouth is twisting with something that just might be embarrasment.

"Oh, Holy God," Bobby says, as Logan's multiple teams and multitudes of missions and insane personal life suddenly coalesce into the single explanation that makes any sense. "Oh god _damn_."

"It's time," Logan says, just as if, right now, that isn't the weirdest, most-fucked up phrase Bobby's even heard.

"What if I can't?" Bobby asks, and hates himself. This is Wolverine, who's never hesitated to act, who's never failed to fight. Wolverine's the best there is, because he'll do _anything_. He ‚Äì holy _God_ \- doesn't even blink at slipping through the timestream.

Wolverine has never asked "what if I can't?" in his entire life. He's just leapt straight into "I will."

What does Logan think of Bobby? Bobby want desperately to know, and will never, ever ask.

Logan shrugs. "You already did it," he says. Bobby can't believe it; he's lighting a cigar. "C'mon, Drake."

Bobby steps into the mouth of the alley. He can see, over his own shoulder, the ocean wall rushing down on them. They are so small. Emma's skin ripples from diamond to pale, perfect flesh. She reaches out to that other self, and he flinches away. Twice.

 _Now_ , he thinks.

He doesn't need to gesture, but he does anyway ‚Äì flings his arms out, palms pressed flat against the approaching pressure of so much water. He can feel it, every inch of the tumbling mass, every tiny burst of feathery spray. He feels very powerful, and completely terrified.

"Stop," he says, and tries to make it sound convincing. Bobby Drake, King Canute.

The water stops.

Bobby has no words to encompass the enormity of it.

Back in the alley, his hands are shaking too much to light the cigar Logan hands him, so Logan does it for him. He knows, without being told, that they will now have to wait, for the other Bobby to melt the ice, for the time to pass.

Then they will step out into the timestream again, as easily as Bobby steps out of a river, and no one will ever know what they did. What he did.

"Whenever you go," Logan says, "Then you are."

Bobby's near-hysterical laugh turns into a gasping cough, aided by the foul-tasting cigar smoke. How can Logan stand these things?

"What I'm saying," Logan says patiently, "Is that you can't get away from yourself."

"I got that," Bobby tells him.

Logan gives him a look that says _yeah, right_. "When I was in Japan-" he begins.

"I got it, Logan," Bobby says firmly. "Really." After a second he adds, "Thanks."

Logan takes Bobby's cigar away and puffs on it. "Hey," he says. "Any time."


End file.
